Friday, 5 February 2016

Counting Angpow

I'm always looking to present maths to my sons in fun and interesting ways. (I loathed the subject as a child!). In these activities I used their fascination with money and their anticipation of receiving their angpow this Chinese New Year to encourage them to practise counting, adding and subtracting.

The first version of this activity was made for Dooey (2.7 years). I gathered together 5 angpow packets and fixed 5 post stick notes to the back with numbers on them. I did the same to the front of the packets, but instead of writing the numbers, I made dots to correspond to the numbers on the back. Then I flipped them over so the numbers were facing him. For each number he read out, he counted the same in coins and placed them inside the packet. Once he was finished, he flipped over the packet and emptied it, comparing the number of coins he placed in the packet with the number of dots on the front. (The post sticks notes with dots worked as a control of error).

The second version of this activity was made for Wugs (4.3 years). Instead of writing numbers on the back of the packets, I wrote sums which corresponded to the answers on the front of the packet:

This activity combined their love of coins with their love of hiding and rediscovering objects in envelopes.